Album of the Week: Moonface's Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped (Download a Free Track)

While you wait for next week's release of this summer's biggest blockbuster, Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne, Moonface's new album, Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped (Jagjaguwar), is a peculiar indie art-house offering worth exploring now. It's been a season for solo releases by artists in bands (Thurston Moore, Eddie Vedder, Zach Rogue, Eleanor Friedberger), and Moonface (a.k.a. Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown) has joined in with this decidedly retro journey into electro-pop. On seven-minute-plus tracks like "Fast Peter" and "Shit-Hawk in the Snow," the vocals echo Joy Division's Ian Curtis, the lyrics and tonal approach recall Arthur Russell, and the organ work is somewhere between Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida" and Richard "Groove" Holmes, all underpinned by tinkling synth effects and grinding digital percussion. Imagine Daft Punk's TRON Legacy soundtrack done by a Scandinavian eighties garage band, and you're most of the way there. The results are urgent, a bit anxious, and, if you have the taste for it, very, very fun.

Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped by Moonface is available today at music retailers and iTunes.